ANTIOXIDANT POTENTIAL OF BILIRUBIN NANOPARTICLES: IN VITRO TIME AND CONCENTRATION DEPENDENT STUDY

Abstract

Many diseases are caused by oxidative stress. Protein, lipid, and DNA macromolecules are harmed by extremely unstable radicals (free radicals) like superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide, and reactive nitrogen species. Oxidative stress also aggravates inflammation in response to inflammatory agonists by activating NF-kB. The antioxidant activity of bilirubin nanoparticles was investigated in this work. Bilirubin was entrapped in pluronic F-127 (PF-127) and bilirubin nanoparticles (BNP) having size 100-150 nm were synthesized. TEM studies revealed that the BNP has spherical morphology. The antioxidant potential of BNP was evaluated by DPPH as well as ABTS assay at different incubation periods. BNP showed higher radical scavenging activity in comparison to bulk bilirubin (bulk B) in both DPPH as well as ABTS assays. Inhibitory concentration50 (IC50) of 0.1% BNP was the lowest in comparison to other formulations at all the incubation periods in the DPPH assay. The IC50 of 0.03% BNP was the lowest in comparison to other formulations at all incubation periods in the ABTS assay. Additionally, BNP (0.03, 0.1, and 0.3%) showed a decrease in the IC50 with an increase in the incubation period in both DPPH as well as ABTS assay. These observations support the potential of bilirubin nanoparticles as a novel antioxidant compound in the future.

Keywords

• bilirubin nanoparticles
• pluronic f-127
• dpph
• abts
• inhibitory concentration50
• scavenging activity